HOW THE HOME SECRETARY COULD CUT BURGLARY AT A STROKE: LEGALISE DRUGS

The Very Senior Policeman was in love with Jack Straw. We lent across the
High Table at X College, our faces close together, and he told me how the
Blackburn MP was set to become the greatest Home Secretary of the century.
"He does the right things, you s ee?" said the ruddy faced Chief
Constable. "He's not an ideologue. If it works, he's interested in it." So
we toasted Jack in red wine and port. Who needs Lodge Nightand funny
handshakes when you've got Oxbridge colleges?

But what about the legalisation of drugs? I asked. Not just cannabis (I do
not think that I know a single person who has not smoked dope) but the
nasty, hard stuff? "Oh, I give it five years," he replied breezily, and
with complete confidence. "There is no future in prohibition. All my
colleagues seem to be persuaded of the need to change. It's got to come."

The contradiction here is not difficult to spot. There is no sign
whatsoever that Jack Straw is prepared to back down from the eternal,
unsuccessful war against drugs. His equation seems very simple: drugs harm
those who take them, and those who have to live with the users. Giving up
on the battle would be to invite the next generation to regard heroin and
cocaine as being the millennial versions of alcohol and tobacco. But here
was a progressive top cop who was arguing that just such a move was
inevitable.

Well, yesterday there was a long feature in the London Evening Standard
about yet another drug bust team. "Last year," it said, "the inspectors
recorded 134 hits, finding a total of 1,747 kilos of heroin. 135 more
kilos than last year." I think this was s upposed to be good news, but was
it? Did these seizures entail fewer addicts on our streets, or were they
themselves the proximate cause of many of our houses being burgled?

The same ambiguity hung over Tuesday's Home Office survey on the link
between drug-taking and criminality. This study - of arrestees who agreed
to be tested - showed that two-thirds had taken illegal drugs (and a
quarter had drunk alcohol) in the period l eading up to their detention.
The results varied from place to place, but nevertheless indicated a much
more direct and constant link than had been expected. But what was the
study really telling us? It could have been saying that just taking drugs
makes you commit crime (you know, crazed crack addict runs amok, that kind
of thing). Or it might have been trying to shout out a more difficult
message, namely that it is the prohibition of drugs which itself creates
all these burglaries, muggings and assaults .

The Home Office estimates that, at the moment, 130,000 users need around
#1.3bn every year to fund their habits (that's #10,000 per annum per
user). Roughly #850m of this must be raised from criminal activity to keep
the users going. And - also according to the Home Office - these users
would need to nick #2.5bn worth of yours and my worldly goods in order to
get that #850m.

Part of the problem is that they have to raise so much; #850m is the
famous "street" price. It is the price that is paid once the drug barons
and middlemen have taken their vast cut, and paid off their enforcers,
couriers and bent officials. The drugs the mselves are worth the tiniest
fraction of that amount. Mostly grown in the Third World, their cost to
the consumer - were they completely legal - would (allowing for tax)
almost certainly be on a par with those sesame snack things that are made
in Poland.

So every time some heroic customs employee digs another dodgy package out
of the wheel arch of a Mondeo, it probably means several more
house-breakings.

All this failure comes despite an immensely costly police campaign, a
soaring prison population and (in America at least) the virtual
criminalisation of an entire generation of black youth. And I haven't even
mentioned the fillip that keeping drugs illega l - because of the immense
profits available - gives to organised crime and violent gangsterism.

Personally I am not too interested in the libertarian argument for
legalisation, save to admit that there is something in the argument that
interfering too much in what people choose to do to themselves will often
lead to bad law. My own take on this is s trictly utilitarian. Might we be
able significantly to reduce crime and also to reduce the damage to people
caused by drug-taking, if we abandoned the prohibitive strategy?

Such evidence as we have is hotly contested, and largely consists of the
famous Amsterdam experiment, in which a number of coffee-houses have been
licensed to sell smallish amounts of hash to customers. Some claim that
the incidence of drug taking has ris en with decriminalisation, and others
that it has actually reduced. The latest report, by the Dutch Centre for
Drug Research and released this week, supports the latter contention. It
suggests that the use of marijuana may actually have declined by nearly half,
and is far lower than in the US, where the drug is prohibited.

Why might such a reduction happen? It seems only logical that if drugs
were cheaper and could be used openly, more kids would take them. This
unimpeachable logic has always been the greatest argument against any kind
of let up in the drugs war. But it is possible that the coffee-shops,
limited in number though they are, have effectively replaced street and
school sales, and with them the myriad tiny contacts between the young
customer and the local supplier. Thus the pressure and occasion to take
drugs ma y have been reduced.

In the long term, then, the question may not be whether to legalise, but
rather exactly what form it should take. One possibility - a sci-fi
scenario - would be to place drugs on an equal footing with other
commercial products. We could nip along to the M egastore and buy the
latest Rolf Harris CD and a packet of own-label smoke ("He's the man who
brought you low-cost pensions. And now Richard Branson brings you Weirdy
Beardy, the ultimate in relaxing weed.").

This is not an attractive proposition when applied to cocaine or heroin,
although it might well work for ecstasy and cannabis. But if hard drugs
were purchasable over the counter at pharmacies, and the prices were a
reasonable reflection of the costs to t he companies to manufacture them
and maintain strict quality, there would be no pushers, and no criminal
multiplier effect. Indeed, a successful and sustained public information
campaign, as there has been over cigarettes or drink-driving, might well
redu ce use substantially.

Now, the greatest Home Secretary of the century seems unwilling to think
in this way yet; the political and international obstacles are immense.
But we are in 1998, and if he would like to be the greatest Home Secretary
of the next century, then he might just like to listen to what his
(adoring) Chief Constables are already telling him: legalise.